Got started reading Robert B. Parker and now I can’t stop! He’s the guy that wrote the books that inspired “Spenser: For Hire” in the '80s. And while checking out ebooks for him, I accidentally checked out a book by T. Jefferson Parker (hey, my fingers sometimes have a mind of their own!) and I’m enjoying it as well. I’ve also checked out “Gone Girl” and some other random stuff from the library I saw on the “New Book” shelf. Once I get my fill of fiction, I think I will start back on the Michio Kaku books and learn me some stuff.

I have an omnibus edition of the first three of those. I love that setting and the story. I very much enjoy his storytelling.

That’s what I’m reading. I’m spending an awful lot of time wondering WTF, which is fun for a change. But I hope, I’m halfway through #2, that things start clearing up some and I can get a bit more background and information. For a series about a mercenary company it’s awful light on military battles, which is fine, but seems counter intuitive. It reads more like a Agatha Christie book where you know more about the antagonist than the protagonist. Except it turns out you don’t know shit about the real bay guy, just some minor players in the action.

I’m also stuck on how the Black Company are working for the “bad guys” who really don’t seem all that bad except when people are talking about how bad they are.

I tried to read this years ago as it was a big influence on the old Myth computer game series, but had trouble getting into them. I think it may have been the slow rate of background being provided. They’re really written like some guy telling crazy stories at a bar, assuming you know enough of the background to fill in the blanks.

I tend to like at least being able to ‘calibrate’ myself as to how much Weird Shit exists in a setting, which I wasn’t getting from this. Might try it again one day, though.

I just finished “The Strain” Trilogy and it was a fun read. Before that I read “World War Z”. That was a good read as well. Just started “The Hunger Games”. Young adult fiction, yeah I know but it was free.

I really want to read WWZ, but the dang thing is priced like it’s printed on latinum. I got the Zombie Survival guide a couple years ago for Christmas, and it seemed pretty cool fluff, for a book I hadn’t read.

I can buy three overpriced Butcher books for that, or 4 or 5 Baen books. And that’s not even looking at ARC or sale pricing.

I keep going back to this, I swear this isn’t true, but I can’t come up with a single example. I must be insane.

Anyway. Reading A Long Time Until Now by “Mad Mike” Z. Williamson. I keep walking by his booth at the Indy 1500 Gun Show, so I figured I’d give it a shot. He does military characters really well. He switches POV characters a lot, so while the Crazy Feminist Air Force chick seems crazy from outside, from her point of view it’s pretty reasonable. Since they are about 12k years in the past she is having some issues with her noble savage and ancients were egalitarian memes.

But, if you are familiar with the genre it’s great “construction porn”. Building this, figuring that out, fixing that other thing, making something else work. Etc. I love that kind of crap, the parts of the old Dungeon Master’s Guide with the castle building rules and costs was always my favorite place to hang out. The author also admitted while all the people he has in the book could actually exist it wouldn’t be likely that the 10 of them would be in two MRAPS, but a book about 10 people that starve to death in a month wasn’t much fun.

In any case, so far it’s a good read, and he did a lot of homework, including researching cooking in an ammo can and actually preparing and eating a couple recipes. Highly religious and feminist, and I suppose men’s rights people, won’t enjoy this if they can’t leave their stuff at home.